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The American Prospect - articles by authorenWe Have Known Black Boys (But None Have Been Bullet-Proof)http://prospect.org/article/we-have-known-black-boys-none-have-been-bullet-proof
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<p>A makeshift memorial to Jordan Davis, who was shot to death after an argument over loud music.</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">I</span> have known black boys, known them in airless classrooms where the scent of their too-strong cologne worked overtime masking the cling of their sweat to skin and hormones. And I have known their scratching, grabbing, tugging at the belt loops of too-big pants, have involuntarily memorized the plaids and imprints on their boxers.</p>
<p>I have known boys like underripe fruit, a pit of eventual sweetness at the core of them, encased in a bitter pulp, toughening from too little tending or underexposure to light. I have watched them become principles in death when they were not finished learning what it would mean to be principled in life.</p>
<p>I have known them nursing dreams with slimming odds of realization, heard them reasoning with the wardens behind their private walls, scraping at the doors some white man’s stubborn shoulder intended to force closed.</p>
<p>Listen. You have heard them, smelled them, touched them, too. Groping boys. Maddening boys. Boys who, had they the luxury of longer lives, would grow to regret how they treated girls, how they dodged their daughters or fought the smallest dudes on the yard.</p>
<p>Had they lived, they would’ve shuffled home, hats in hand, hugged their mamas, clapped their daddies’ shoulders, nodded like men who understood remorse, who’d been leveled by regret and learned to talk about it.</p>
<p>Had they lived, they would’ve borne enough concussions to concede their desire for millions at the the expense of unscathed minds. And maybe they would’ve been Marines like Jordan Davis hoped he might be, maybe aviators like Trayvon envisioned himself or husbands like Jonathan Ferrell and Sean Bell were so close to becoming. Maybe they would’ve grown to guess that the cost of longer life was hunching one’s height at a white woman’s door, a soft knock rather than the screams that often escape the frantic or crowded or injured. Maybe they would’ve conceived children with women with whom they couldn’t bear to live — and all over again, they would find themselves having to grow, to lean toward a quickly dimming light and to become tender when it was far more tempting to coarsen.</p>
<p>They would’ve learned to be less clumsy, less clawing, to kiss as though they had the promise of many unthreatened years. They might have lived long enough to make tenuous sense of the finite number of American fates black men meet, long enough to marry well, then poorly, then well again.</p>
<p>Perhaps.</p>
<p>But we are losing them too soon to know, while they are yet boys. We are tending graveyards instead of gardens, and have more memories of boys than moments with full-grown men. It gets harder to talk to these could-have-been-towering trees, these possibly-flowering plants whose fruits we’ll never know.</p>
<p>And every day, there are new boys among us. We raindance for them. <em>Grow. Live.</em> We campaign for them. <em>Grow. Live.</em> We keep them from harm even when harm might be their better mentor.<em>Hide. Grow. Live.</em> And we guess for them. <em>Grow. Live.</em> And we know for them. <em>Grow! Live!</em> Living alone never ensures what a boy will become, but black men, above all, are the boys spared long enough to live. This is the look of hope, our lowest bar to clear: boys reaching bullet-free adulthood and outreaching everyone’s fear.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>(Cross-posted from Stacia Brown's personal blog, <a href="http://stacialbrown.com/2014/02/16/we-have-known-boys-but-none-have-been-bullet-proof/">here</a>.)</em></p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 17 Feb 2014 17:31:51 +0000219755 at http://prospect.orgStacia L. BrownThe Seven Stages of Important Black Film Fatiguehttp://prospect.org/article/seven-stages-important-black-film-fatigue
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="dropcap">I</span>f you live outside of major film markets like New York or Los Angeles, this weekend marked your first opportunity to see Steve McQueen's much-lauded <em>12 Years a Slave</em>. But it's probable that you've already heard early buzz, either from fawning reviewers or from friends who've caught advance screenings. Perhaps you've heard that its commitment to historical accuracy has resulted in graphic depictions of violence and torture. Maybe your best friend still can't shake the cracking urgency in Chiewetel Ejiofor's voice or a haunting expression on Lupita Nyong’o's face. </p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">If you've experienced any of this as a member of the black movie-going public, you're already in the cycle. You've entered the Seven Stages of Important Black Film Fatigue, a tiring exercise in decision-making whenever films like </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">12 Years a Slave</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> are released. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The stages are doubt, guilt, self-preservation, annoyance, anger, vulnerability, and acceptance.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">You may have never heard these stages named, but you've likely experienced most of them. And if you’re one of the fortunate few who’ve escaped the cycle, it’s safe to presume you’ve seen someone else </span><a href="https://twitter.com/DeePhunk/status/392120444058218496" style="line-height: 1.538em;">struggle</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/TyraMartin/status/390650923967463424" style="line-height: 1.538em;">through</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> it on </span><a href="https://twitter.com/BlancaVNYC/status/392003162825302017" style="line-height: 1.538em;">social</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/GeeDee215/status/390566226218319872" style="line-height: 1.538em;">media</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">. For some, the cycle starts as soon as a new black film, chronicling an important issue or public figure, is announced. It persists through marketing, early reviews, and opening weekend, as we wonder what effects the film will have on us. We may predict, with doubt, annoyance and anger, "This writer or director is not going to do this story justice." We might declare, with some vulnerability, "I'll have to mentally prepare myself to watch this." Or we may opt out of a viewing altogether, with the self-preservation explanation, "My heart just can't take seeing this." Box-office numbers tell part of the story; the better attended an Important Black Film, the more of us have reached the acceptance stage.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">For the black filmgoer, movies set during slavery or the civil-rights movement, as well as biopics which take place in contemporary, racially-charged America, are not mere entertainment or popcorn fare. Films like </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">12 Years A Slave, Fruitvale Station, Django Unchained, </em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">and</span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;"> The Butler</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> hold particular emotional resonance. They re-enact (or subvert) sorrow with which we have some experience, sorrow that has worked its way through our lineage in the form of oral history.</span></p>
<p>This is why we deliberate before attending Important Black Films. It's also why so many are marketed to us as moral obligations. We're told we must support these films because they advance the narrative of our people in this country, each ostensibly offering one more chance to flesh out details that have been willfully overlooked in history books or minimized in favor advancing a post-racial objective.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">We saw this obligation argument in George Lucas's push of 2012's </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">Red Tails</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">, where he patted himself on the back for working so hard to bring his vision of the Tuskegee Airmen as noble, heroic, respectable, and beleaguered to the big screen. He even gave audiences an ultimatum, claiming that if </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">Red Tails</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> flopped Hollywood </span><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/story/2012-01-04/george-lucas-talks-red-tails-production/52378392/1?csp=ip" style="line-height: 1.538em;">would be warier</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> of funding other black films.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">When Lucas and filmmakers work this angle, their message is clear: because they’ve been gracious enough to show everyone the best achievement and worst injustice black Americans have faced, black audiences owe them ticket sales. Without them, we’ll be stuck in a vacuum of Tyler Perry dramedies.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">But viewers like Orville Lloyd Douglas would rather take their chances with the telling of more original stories, set outside the eras of slavery and Jim Crow. He questions Hollywood’s motives for producing historical “race films” in </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/12/why-im-not-watching-the-butler-12-years-a-slave" style="line-height: 1.538em;"><em>The Guardian</em></a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">:</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">“I'm convinced these black race films are created for a white, liberal film audience to engender white guilt and make them feel bad about themselves. Regardless of your race, these films are unlikely to teach you anything you don't already know.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Douglas’s sentiments speak not just to our doubt, anger, and annoyance, but to the vulnerability we feel when our history has been commodified by Hollywood. Will it be viewed with pity or empathy? Will it account for the realities of black Americans at all, or are these films really, as Douglas asserts, all about evoking white liberal guilt? The mystery of motive drives so many other stages in our fatigue cycle and, ultimately, determines whether we’ll be able to trust the story and the team who’s telling it enough to head out to a screening.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">With its visceral violence and hard, but familiar truths, </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">12 Years A Slave</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> may not be for everyone. I’m still struggling through the Seven Stages of Important Black Film Fatigue, myself. I’ve skipped </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">Django Unchained</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> (doubt and annoyance), </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">Fruitvale Station</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> (self-preservation), and </span><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">The Butler</em><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> (guilt). But with nearly unanimous recommendations from trusted reviewers and friends, I’m hoping I can push my way toward accepting that a teary, shaken, introspective viewing experience is in order this time around.</span></p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:30:16 +0000218999 at http://prospect.orgStacia L. BrownGoing Beyond Protesthttp://prospect.org/article/going-beyond-protest
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="dropcap">I</span>t's been years since racism's most common manifestations were overt—in 2013, the charge of racism is still most commonly identified with people like Paula Deen, and it's easy to dissociate oneself with someone who resembles a Daughter of the Confederacy, wistful for the days when black employees could be asked to wear butlers' attire while being called the N-word, without a hint of backlash. </p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">But most recipients of racist practice have long understood that the most insidious and damaging cases are covert—so covert, in fact, that they can be easily denied. Recently, much has been made of the idea that racial bias has become so implicit that most people who impose their prejudices are blissfully unaware that they're doing so. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The 1963 March on Washington was organized in a time of overt racism. This year's 50th anniversary events commemorating that march were performed in an age of implicit bias. It's difficult to attack a terror that will no longer allow itself to be named by marching one mile around the seat of a government that willingly perpetuates that terror. But organizers and participants did exactly that this week, aiming to regain some of the steam of a generation for which racism was a foghorn not a dog whistle. </span></p>
<p>As a child of the eighties, born at the tail end of 1979, just 15 years after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, I've never learned to feel at ease in this country. Even as I grew up in predominantly black communities where racial tension often lay dormant, I understood its presence as a low-humming undercurrent. </p>
<p>During my childhood, the March on Washington was usually cited as a dividing line: Before it, there was Jim Crow; after it, legal acts of segregation and discrimination were no more. It is true that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a benchmark in American history. And certainly, the March was integral in the passing of that legislation. But too often, we walk away from wistful discussions of that fateful event believing its gains have been permanent and undefiled.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Perhaps it becomes easier to critically consider the civil-rights movement of the 1960s with the buffer of a few decades—especially if during those decades we’ve witnessed the ways in which civil-rights legislation can be manipulated, still allowing for segregation, discrimination, wage inequities, and unequal opportunities.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">But it isn’t distance that makes it difficult to view the 1963 march as some panacea that irrevocably revolutionized racial relations. It’s proximity, close proximity. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The tension I experienced as a low hum years ago is audible to everyone now. From the gutting of the Voting Rights Act earlier this summer to the increasingly precarious protection of women's reproductive rights in many states to marriage inequality and the denial that public school closings in low-income, predominantly black areas are a civil-rights violation, racial injustice can no longer be ignored or denied.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Our responses to these systemic inequities have necessarily changed in recent decades. Though public protests and vigils haven't disappeared completely, our expectations of them have. We understand from the experiences of our elders that, even if civic unrest can result in the holding a special legislative session or the repeal of an unjust law, they are not a curative. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">A march will not help us challenge a hirer, for instance, who cannot or will not acknowledge that his refusal to interview an applicant with an ethnic name makes him complicit in upholding the racial wage gap. A sit-in, even if it results in the passing of the brilliant Trayvon's Law for which the Dream Defenders have lobbied in Florida, will not prevent an implicitly biased gun-wielder from viewing an unarmed person of color as a palpable threat. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Even so, lawful protest often feels like the best weapon against injustice we have. It emboldens citizens of a democracy to continue believing they have agency in protecting their own freedoms. As this summer's protests in North Carolina, Florida, Texas and elsewhere have taught us, direct action still has great value. But perhaps, in this day and age, its focus shouldn't be just on legislative change. Perhaps today, "speaking truth to power" also means turning to the person protesting beside you and simply holding a conversation that challenges assumptions so deeply held that they implicitly uphold a racist status quo. </span></p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 30 Aug 2013 12:56:48 +0000218620 at http://prospect.orgStacia L. Brown